My book, A Pebble Cast in the Nordic Sea, is out in the world.
It feels unreal to say that sentence. Writing a book was one thing–living with it, doubting it, accepting it– but releasing it? That’s a different kind of vulnerability. It’s baring your soul to people who you might have only seen the performative version of you. It’s letting people you might have held less than 5-minute conversations to see the unglamorous version of you for the goal of owning your voice and to be a possible anchor for someone who might be feeling alone and see a mirror in the pages. It’s not mine anymore; it now belongs to the world.
It’s a mix of pride and peace with a thin thread of fear woven in. Pride, because this story carries my voice and the voices of women who had been silenced too long. Peace, because I finally let go. And fear, because releasing truth– especially lived truth–is never neat.
When I hold the printed pages now, I don’t see perfection. Oh, it is far from perfect. But there is stillness. I know the indecisiveness in certain parts and pages, but I can also remember how rebellion and the sheer audacity to dare won.
This memoir is not just mine–it’s a collective exhale. It is for the woman who left home and found both freedom, loneliness, to belong and be othered at the same time in another country. It’s for the woman who questions the rules she was told to obey. It’s for anyone who has ever stood at the edge of the unknown with shaking hands, steady eyes, and decided to leap anyway.
I wrote this hoping that someone, somewhere, will pick it up and feel less alone. That they’ll recognize themselves in the pages and think, maybe I was brave in ways the world didn’t see.
I’ve learned that once you release something honest, it no longer belongs only to you. It is now for everyone who finds a fragment of themselves inside it. And that in itself is beautiful. The real ripple–and I’m grateful it has begun.
Therese Marie Baba Christensen
ThereseChristensen 